EPISODE 32: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR DOES AN UNSATISFACTORY DANCE ON THE GRAVE OF FATHER PETER ORR SJ AND FAILS YET AGAIN TO SINGLE-HANDEDLY DESTROY THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

Welcome to my blog which hopes to take advantage of your inattention to slip in a bit of uncharitable reminiscence. Should it turn out, by one of those miraculous co-incidences that fate is so partial to, that you do read on and you become offended by any inference that I think that catholicism is in itself child abuse then marvellous.

One of my meaner goals of my life has been to witness the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church. And in this I have been fortunate to some extent, especially when I cast my eyes towards Ireland - which I rarely do because Ireland and the Irish annoy me and always have done.( I am of Irish stock myself so that probably acts as some defence a charge of racism and really it is the English indulgence in Irish stereotyping, ‘oh the plucky witty guiness swilling leprechauns from the emerald isle to be sure to be sure’  that particularly bugs me.) Of course there is a long way to go before the Pope is popped and the riches of the church redistributed among the non-catholic poor. But a man can hope.

I have the Roman Catholics  in mind today because I want to tell you about how much I hated Father Peter Orr SJ who died a few weeks ago in his 80s. I haven’t seen this man for 41 years and it was quite a shock to suddenly see his face in the obituary coloumn of Jesuit magazine that an old friend sent me. Having held Father Orr’s name in my mind for so long as the archetypal jesuit abuser, I expected, I think, that a flood of memories would come back on confronting his image and discovering (as I’d assumed) that he was dead. This has not been the case. Instead I’m trying hard to reconstruct that period in my life to see why his name has been so firmly etched in my mind. Sadly, one person I could ask, the friend who sent me the obbituary, hates thinking about those days so much that he won’t even meet me outside email world.

I must have started at Wimbledon College Grammar School in September 1963, three months before my 10^th birthday. I’d been to a catholic primary near Guildford where I’d been caned, more than once by the headmaster, Father Peter(?) Freed, who really was a shit. I can see him now, tall, youngish, prematurely balding. On one occasion I’d been accussed of harassing two girls from a nearby school. It was absolutely a case of mistaken identity but I wasn’t believed. The injustice of it all struck deep and destroyed my trust in authority. I think it disturbed me also because after that I noticed a capacity in myself to bully the weak and that shamed me.

For some reason I was a very popular boy at grammar school and was nearly always voted class captain. I was tall and strong for my age and would captain the rugby team which I loved and run the athletic events which I hated. To my enormous chagrin I was crap at cricket and scared of the fast-bowlers. (Only when I was 14 did I get glasses and realize what the problem had been.) Right from the first day I was plunged into a world of unreasonable authoritarian violence. At any point of the day, it seemed, a master or priest could find a reason to smack you with a plimsol or a ruler, hit you on the hands or bum with a ferula or mock you mercilessly in front of your peers. If you ever spoke back or questioned anything you were told you were cheeky or disruptive and punished with detention or more whacks with the ferula. In my first year there, the sixth form prefects were also allowed to cane you or make you do tasks for them. I was lucky that I was sort of adopted by one of the prefects who looked after me and protected me from his classmates.

The first class I was in was called Figures 1. After that came Rudiments, Lower grammar, Grammar,Syntax, Upper Syntax. We learned Latin, Greek, French, physics, chemistry, maths, english, history and art. And of course Religious Doctrine. We were given daily catechism tests.

Q: Who made you?

A: God made me.

Q: Why did god make you?

A. Um…

SMACK!

Father Colliston gave us our sex education classes. His general refrain in life was ‘it’s a mystery’, which at the time seemed an unsatisfactory explanation for much but now covers just about everything. His most memorable teaching on sex was that it was a mortal sin to wake-up in the morning with an erection. This was even worse, he told successive classes of 14 year old boys, than having impure thoughts becaused it showed lust was deep within you. A mortal sin is an offence so severe that should you die without having confessed the sin you will go to hell. Hell! And believe me the jesuits knew about hell and they dished it out whenever they could.

Father Marsden was the french teacher. Why don’t I speak french? Because every time I opened my mouth he either mocked me or punished me.

George McParland (?) was the P.E. teacher. Friendly bloke. Still whack you in passing for a laugh. He used to make fun of my name and my face. Said I looked like a squirrel. As soon as I was old enough I grew a beard because I believed there was something wrong with my cheekbone structure, because of him.

Father Murphy came later on. He was young. Strangely, the year he taught physics I came top whereas the rest of the time I failed. It was on the rugby field he began to pick on me. I was 15 then, six foot, eleven stone, long hair, attitude. The school had employed a proper rugby player who played with Esher to train us. Because I was the biggest and the best they began to target me with Mr Barron (?) always grabbing the ball and running straight at me to see whether I flinched or not. In Rugby if you do backoff you end up getting hurt so time after time I’d have to tackle this fifteen stone metal-boned scrum-half. The consequence was that the frustration and anger would build up within me and I’d lash out during games. In one match against another school I got sent off for kicking a lad in the head in a rage and was banned from playing away matches. Then I got sent off again and was banned altogether and expelled. This was my second expulsion from Wimbledon and came just a few months after them having accepted me back after the first expulsion which had been something to do with Father Orr.

But quite what, I don’t recall. I wish I could. I have a few memories and a few dates. My mother liked Fr Orr, but she liked most priests. He even came to the house once or twice which would have been very unsual as he was a schoolteacher not a parish priest. In 1965/66 he took me to see the movie Doctor Zhivago in London. I was already then fairly obsessed by Russia because I was a vociferous reader and all the longest books in the library were russian novels. Maybe this was why he took me, I don’t know. I’m sure he never touched me or acted out of propriety although he was famous for coming into the showers after rugby and insisting the boys drop their towels and showed them their knees. ‘Show me your knees, boy.’ I think I was aware I had some sort of power over him and this wasn’t normal behaviour. In July 1967 the Upper Sixth, the 17 year olds, went on a school-trip by train to Moscow with Father Orr in charge. Although I was 14, I was allowed to go and was the only one there under 17. Again, nothing untoward happened with the priest. Then in March 1968, a few months before my O Levels, I was expelled after loosing my temper in the classroom and telling Father Orr to fuck off and that if he came anywhere near me I’d hit him. I’ve truly no idea how it came to that.

My partner fears that my delving into this could cause repercussions but that’s in part because she hears what I say rather than reads what I write. There won’t be because no-one reads this anyway and even if they should there’s nothing incendiary here; I only wish there was because these people shouldn’t have pissed me off in the first place.  I don’t fear for my own psyche either because I am already aware of how much my personal identities are wrapped up in these formative yearsand believe any unwrapping, or recogition of how this happened, can only be a gain. (I hope.)